My SECOND Life
(Right at this moment, my abducted son is being abused in another country and there is nothing I can do about it other than write this book to get publicity for his story.)
We all have two lives. We only get to experience living in the second after we realize we only have just one.
I have my first real scare in life when I get attacked by a kangaroo when I am seven.
My first brush with the cliff-face edge of death comes when I am 12.
My dad drives the family down the dangerous Skipper’s Canyon dirt road in New Zealand in a rented minivan. Including the occasion, I am almost involved in two different plane flight crashes, in the same night, there have been at least a half dozen more occasions when I have been within a moment’s inattention of being killed.
However, none of those frightening incidents compare to what I experience after my son is abducted. This memoir is the story of how I used the traumatic experiences of my life to give me strength to forge on during a 13-year fight to be a father to my son.
What did it take for me to get to my second life?
It took me to truly understand what fear is.
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On my first trip away from home as an independent adult I am in Steamboat Springs on New Years Eve and my friend and I had bought some sausage links from the City Market to eat for dinner but we had nothing in the house to cook it with. My friend and I decided to go door to door at 2am looking for a fry pan.
The first door I come to has light showing underneath, while I can hear people moving around. Someone inside is still up. I give a sturdy knock on the door frame with more urgency than I should.
The sound of the people moving inside ceases. There is a long quiet and I shift uneasily on my feet. The door suddenly swings open to reveal the barrel of an UZI semi-automatic long rifle, the weapon of choice for the serious American squirrel hunter, pointed at my chest.
My entire body goes rigid.
They say that just before a person dies, their life flashes before their eyes. What I found happens is that an encyclopedia of information stored in the brain is instantly accessible by one thought.
Every single news report I had seen on Australian TV of the American kids who are routinely shot every year while trick or treating on Halloween immediately is recalled. Of course, this type of thing was going to happen. How could I still be so naïve at 20 to do something like this in a foreign country?
“What do you want?” The holder of the UZI demands.
“Oh shit. Please don’t kill me.” My words come out haltering. Speaking them takes every drop of my energy.
When men are 20 years of age, even if they are not mighty, they are normally compelled to act like they could have the world at their mercy. They are in the prime of life. They feel they have control. They feel invincible. But, when someone shoves a gun in their face, they will feel as helpless as a baby abandoned on church steps.
The fear of letting Shane down carries far less weight than the terror experienced by having a muzzle between my eyes.
It is the first time in my existence that I am confronted by the reality that my life can be at the mercy of someone’s hair trigger. There is no such thing as who is in the right and who is in the wrong here. The world does not care. There is only life or death. Whether the perpetrator ends up in jail is meaningless to me. Whether a court finds him guilty of manslaughter is irrelevant. That will not be justice. If I am dead, I will have nothing. My life is extinguished.
With death, I lose everything there is to have.
“Why the hell are you knocking on the door at three in the morning?”
His fingers tighten their grip.
My knees tremor. My hands nervously open and close to allay the sweat build up on them.
“My mate and I wanted to know if we can borrow a frying pan. We have nothing at my apartment,” I stammer.
I throw in the concept that I have a friend around who will undoubtedly come looking for me. This bombshell hopefully should make me safer.
The man considers this for a moment, with no softening of the disgruntled expression on his face.
“Get in here,” he commands with a wave of the end of his weapon.
What else can anyone do but obey?
Simon Yeats has lived nine lives, and by all estimations, is fast running out of the number he has left. His life of globetrotting the globe was not the one he expected to lead.
He grew up a quiet, shy boy teased by other kids on the playgrounds for his red hair. But he developed a keen wit and sense of humor to always see the funnier side of life.
With an overwhelming love of travel, a propensity to find trouble where there was none, and being a passionate advocate of mental health, Simon’s stories will leave a reader either rolling on the floor in tears of laughter, or breathing deeply that the adventures he has led were survived.
No author has laughed longer or cried with less restraint at the travails of life.
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